For people who care about their food

Publish your own coffee table book with a Blurb prize!

Have you ever fancied making your own coffee table book? Not Delia has teamed up with Blurb to offer you the chance to win the prize of publishing your very own book about whatever subject you like: food, travel, your kids – anything, really!

Imagine seeing your favourite photos published in a beautiful book. As aspiring foodie writers, we’d all love to see our own cookbooks in print, but it ain’t so easy unless you’re famous (or married to Gordon Ramsay – bah!).

Blurb makes it easy! You don’t have to traipse around publishers with your project proposal and face the prospect of rejection slips. You decide what you want to put in your book, and Blurb makes the book for you.

And now Blurb has made it even easier, because they’re offering a £30 voucher towards the price of your book as a prize to one lucky Not Delia reader. All you have to do is comment on this post and say WHY you deserve to win the prize. A Blurb staff member will then choose a winner. The closing date is the 31st of May so you have till then to enter, but don’t delay. Do it today!

Have a look at Blurb – it’s an easy website to use and find information such as pricing and shipping details. Their prices are surprisingly inexpensive and they ship to most countries so, depending on what you want to do, you could even make a free book if you win the prize!

By the way, you can also sell your books via Blurb. You can use these Blurb books for any subject you like. Perhaps you’d like to make a wedding album and share it with your friends and relatives. Are you an aspiring travel photographer? Make and sell your own travel photo book. You could also create and sell a book to raise funds for your favourite charity. You can do it. The possibilities are endless.

Go on over and have a look at Blurb, and then come back and tell us WHY you deserve to win the prize. Gotta be in it to win it, as they say.

12 Responses to “Publish your own coffee table book with a Blurb prize!”

I’m useless with a camera so I wouldn’t make a book with my efforts (unless it was a collection of beheadings lol). But my wife is a very keen photographer and has amassed 100s of photos on our travels over the years. I’d love to surprise her with a photo album picking out the best of them. We can’t afford a luxury cruise, but maybe a photographic tour around the Med with a decent bottle or two of red wine and some gourmet olives will do her instead!

Thank you Blurb and Not Delia for this fantastic chance.
My husband has recently started a unique Photography business (only a handful in the world), which has had no marketing other than word of mouth. The oppertuntiy to publish some of his photos with Blurb’s help would be priceless. Steven (hubby) designed a mast aearial system that is operated from a winch which is mounted onto our truck. It can extend 70ft and he places his D700 on top with a pan head tilt and zoom control. Live aspect is enabled by a usb wire connected to his lap top.
Word of mouth is great for star up sole traders as budgets are small, funding has come from our own savings and gov grants.
To have his aerial work published in a book is a once in a life time gift, that we could not have dreamt of – the ability to bring his work to a wider audience and in turn potential clients.
Thank you again for this chance.
Caroline

In memory of our cats. We have been married twenty six years and have always had from one to five cats. All of them found us. One lived to be a great age of twenty two years. Two lived to nineteen. One died of a very rare, unheard of by the CDC, blood problem at eleven. Our last cat passed on recently at the age of eighteen. We miss them all, love them all and would love a picture book of them. As we are in the middle of a long distance move, we cannot think of adopting a kitty. But as soon as we settle, I’m sure one or two will find us.

I’d have a book made about posture and the problems that poor posture generates. I can’t imagine how many work hours are lost due to aches and pains that are created by poor work posture and poor life postural habits. I’d illustrate the book with lots of ‘don’t do this, do this instead’ pictures and some good examples of what poor posture can lead to. Many people don’t realise that simple shoulder tendinitis is the result of years of holding the shoulders forward and pinching off the tendons, many cases of lumbago even the sciatic type pains are generally a result of poor posture and the effects of slump and slide on the spine. I guess to get everyone’s attention the book would have to feature nudes, but provided they were holding the right posture that would probably be alright.
Cheers.
Graeme

This is a great opportunity, but entrants need to understand that the winner gets a big discount on the cost of creating the master book file, not on the price of each book sold by the store – so either it’s a low-volume vanity project or the winner has some serious marketing to do once he/she has created the book.

As I read the rules of the competition, I shan’t necessarily be judged on the goals of the book I propose to create – just why ND should subsidise my effort. I don’t see any rules restricting me to one entry, either, but here’s one to kick off with:

The Best of Not Delia – according to Man in Greasy Shirt (I’ll need permission from ND to use some of their material, and I’ll be adding Man in Greasy Shirt suggestions about how things would turn out if he were the cook)

To take your second point first, it’s not as restricted as you’ve read it: Blurb, not Not Delia, will be choosing the winner, and you can choose to make your photo album on any topic you like – it’s a completely free choice.

(On the other hand, it may well be that Blurb will be judging on the goals of the book you propose to create. But that’s a matter for them, not for Not Delia.)

Going back to your first point, I’m not sure you’re right. As I understand Blurb’s website, creation of the book is free in any case. It’s only when you come to order a hard copy that costs become an issue – and, depending on what you choose to create, those may amount to less than £30 anyway.

(It’d be extremely generous of Blurb if they were offering a discount on the price of each book sold, but that was never on the cards – I don’t think it’s realistic to expect any company to make that kind of open-ended commitment!)

The price of any book Blurb sell is paid by the person buying the book, as one would expect. The proceeds go to Blurb, who pay a share to the person who produced the book. It all seems pretty straightforward.

What you say about low-volume vanity projects or serious marketing is true, I’m sure, but won’t be a consideration for most people unless they’re planning to use a Blurb photo book as a business opportunity.

As I understand it, if you want to sell your book then Blurb tells you the cost price, say £20, and you decide the sale price, say £25. The purchaser then comes along and buys for £25. Blurb takes their manufacturing cost plus a small processing fee, and the rest of the profit on sales is yours. It’s all outlined on their website in the “set your price” section.

The volume of sales depends on the nature of the project and your own marketing. If, say, you made a wedding album, then you might expect family and friends to buy. If, say, you made a cookbook, then it’s up to you to market it perhaps via a food blog or other means available to you.

If your book does well and becomes an Editor’s Pick then you get additional marketing from Blurb to help you sell even more copies.

As for people entering more than once, I don’t have a problem with that. More activity on Not Delia, more projects for Blurb to choose from.

In which case, I suggest you try again with another project because I’m not wanting to give my permission for joint ventures such as you suggest. I’ve no doubt that we’ll make a Blurb book for ND soon and I would want complete control of any books published on behalf of, or in association with, ND.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age, and to my dismay, found that all the fellow sufferer and survivor books were written by ladies in their 50’6 and 60’s. I couldn’t relate at all. They all had an atittude of getting through it, of sisterhood and explaining to the grandchildren.

I have written my biography – it’s the book I WANTED to read. It’s funny, it’s informative and it’s aimed at helping younger women get through it. I cover everything from laughing at the physio NHS leaflets which invariably feature older ladies with grey hair in a bun, to the problems in finding a mastectomy bra that doesn’t make you feel like you should be sitting down to knit!

I would love to raise money to help my local breast unit buy the equipment they so desperately need, and also to put money into a programme to support younger womken – both by funding more age-appropriate leaflets and by encouraging younger “mentors” for the newly diagnosed. I was “mentored” by a 58 year old devout Christian who wanted to talk about her grandchildren – I was a 31 year old who wanted to talk about the next rock festival! You can see the problem!

If I won, I would use my prize to publish what I consider the funniest and most helpful extracts, and use a portion of the profts towards this.